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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28743360">Blood Oath</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/v00doll/pseuds/v00doll'>v00doll</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Body Image, Crack Treated Seriously, Dehumanization, Dialogue Heavy, Eye Trauma, Flesh!Elias, Gen, Gore, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, No beta we die like archival assistants, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Out of Character, Reality Bending, Swearing, Violence, frantically bangs this out before the new episodes come out tomorrow, go home, im trying 2 cover all the bases bc this is like...yikes, probably, thats it thats the fic, themes of ownership, uhmm, well more like the opposite</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:54:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,324</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28743360</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/v00doll/pseuds/v00doll</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>And that fear, that idea of being an owned object bleeds nicely into that of being a watched subject. The same is true in reverse. After all, the entitlement of a voyeur to watching isn't too far off from the entitlement of an owner to, well, whatever it wants to do. None of this should matter. It wouldn't matter if Elias had just not checked his email. But he did. Nice going, wiseguy.</p>
<p>Alternatively Titled: Jonah Fails To Possess Elias and Accidentally Offers Him Up To The Flesh, Drawn Out For Way More Words Than Necessary</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter One: Come Here. I Am a Normal Boss and I Mean You No Harm.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>01/13/2021 7:02 pm watch like half the plausible deniability im banking on get insta-murdered in the next week or even tomorrow if im rlly unlucky. idrc either way im just glad i FINALLY finished this monstrosity. it is my magnum opus. for now. enjoy</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dust aplenty and the echoing pad of footsteps hang heavy like smog in the cool, dank air.</p>
<p>“If you’ll follow me just a bit further,” the old man's breath hitches slightly with every step. He leans more heavily on his cane moment by moment, Elias can see it in the dim beam of the flashlight. “We’re almost there. I promise it’s really not so bad.”</p>
<p>“Why all the trouble then?” Elias ventures. Strangely, it’s the most confidently he’s been able to speak this entire time. Holding a flashlight will do that to you.</p>
<p>James Wright turns partway, grinning. The beam glares off the half-moon spectacles far too low on his nose to be of any use and reflects in his eye, making the pupil seem to glow. “What’s wrong? Are you scared, Elias?”</p>
<p>He tries not to recoil in indignance. The motion doesn't happen, but the idea and the conscious effort are recognised and catalogued all the same. He’s not <em>scared.</em> Anyone would be at least a little weirded out by the situation.</p>
<p>Ah yes, the situation. The one the notable Mr. Bouchard was currently in. That situation. That one. Yes.</p>
<p>A quick rundown: twenty minutes ago, Elias Bouchard had flown into the office of one Mr. James Wright, head of the Magnus Institute, London in a state of embarrassment that was due only to worsen in the immediate future. After thoroughly discombobulating the young man by no means at all save for a little creepy smiling, -though to be fair it would discombobulate anyone. He was just that creepy.- Wright presented Bouchard with a deal no one could ever have possibly seen coming. Nobody at all. Ever. There is no way anyone could have predicted even in the slightest, remotest, most nebulous way the fact that James Wright offered Elias Bouchard his own position as head of the Institute in the event of his death. But that is what happened! A shocker! Immediately following this event, Wright proceeded to lead Elias down into the Institute’s archive, and further down still, into a set of tunnels.</p>
<p>“A little institute secret I’d like to share, since I have you here and all.” he’d said. “I know it’s a bit, well, spooky for lack of a better word.” For some reason, his admittance of the creepiness of the situation calmed Elias somewhat, as if the self-awareness meant he meant less harm. Besides, Elias had mused at the time, plenty of “spooky” bullshit already happens around here anyway. And while he insisted on adding that last bit for the sake of his reputation as someone who didn’t demean himself to using words like “spooky,” it was in fact the most accurate possible word to describe the tunnels. Dark, serpentine chambers that seemed at once both a rotting history, long dead and decayed and moments from crumbling to dust underfoot, and cold, clean, industrialist limbs of some buried proto-capitalist stone demigod. Cobwebs clung to the seams between the walls and the ceiling and floor wherever they were truly separate, so thick and foamy white they seemed to glow themselves when he shone the beam on them yet disappearing into a blackness heavier than that that filled the empty air around them when he turned it away again. Well, empty save for apparently all the dust in the fucking world. Elias coughed.</p>
<p>That brings any hypothetical Watchers up to speed. Elias coughs again. “Can you at least tell me what this ‘institute secret’ is? I’m not going to get mixed up in anything shady, am I?”</p>
<p>Wright walks on and hmms with a thoughtful smile in his voice. “I think surprises are better, in this case. But no. You aren’t getting mixed up in anything at all, really. It’s almost purely aesthetic. I just thought you might enjoy getting a good eyeful. This is quite the privilege, after all.”</p>
<p>Sighing, Elias continues to trod after him. Just what everybody wants to be doing on their lunch break. An hour late, too. He’s starving. They trudge onward into the dusty dark.</p>
<p>----</p>
<p>The tower arches up before them. Elias hesitates, but prodded like cattle, continues on nevertheless. The tower is not empty. Soon Elias won’t be either.</p>
<p>Or at least that was how it was supposed to go.</p>
<p>Jonah goes through all the usual motions. Knocking him out with his cane -custom built specifically for this purpose, and walking of course- laying his body -because alive as he was, he may as well not have been at this point- out on the ground, and setting about the process of one last careful inspection before finally digging in.</p>
<p>He's pretty. The word itself has a feminine connotation that doesn't apply to Elias by a long shot but "handsome" doesn't feel quite right. But then again has anyone ever used the word “handsome” unironically and thought “ah yes, this is the perfect word. It encapsulates exactly what I mean to say!”? His good looks have a sort of subtle androgyny that lend themselves more to "pretty" despite his age, and he does still look his age. Older, even. He's only thirty-four but he could <em>easily</em> pass for almost forty, Jonah thinks, if need be. That’s a big selling point. While the sense of wizened authority that comes with being visibly aged is always nice in a body, it's outweighed in importance by the amount of time that body has left. He runs his hands, wrinkled like wet paper and trembling ever-so-faintly, over Elias'. They're large and strong with long fingers and calloused palms. His arm musculature will build well, he muses. He turns the man's head this way and that, his unkempt hair flopping with the motion. Jonah makes a mental note to get a haircut <em>immediately</em>. It looks <em>so</em> unprofessional, he sneers, but that's a strawman argument. He just doesn't like it. His neck is perhaps a little slender, but it leads into broad shoulders and a strong jaw. Most importantly, he's tall. Overall a good choice. Five stars. Practically hand-crafted for this exact purpose, all these years occupied by a mere placeholder as it waited for its true owner to find and use it. Jonah pats himself on the back, or at least he would if he wasn't aware of the constant Eyes at his back. Yes, he thinks, this is a young, strong, beautiful body.</p>
<p>It would be a shame to let it go to waste.</p>
<p>He brings his own palms back up to Elias' face, and digs his thumb into his right eye.</p>
<p><strong>“You've known pain,"</strong> he muses out loud, tilting his head coquettishly. It'll be more cool and intimidating when he's Elias and not this fucking geezer.<strong> "Haven't you? Even dead, or as good as dead, rather, it's plain on your face. I don't need to have dug into your head to know that. I have, of course, but it makes no difference. But nobody knows this. Few know anything about you, really. It's almost sad. So much potential, wasted away by a life spent in obscurity, in selfish self-isolation with no friends, no family, hardly even an acquaintance to tell the tale. Do you even know how much power you could have, how much influence you could administer, if only you didn't insist on such nonsense? Of course not. Sure, you can complain of loneliness all you want, punch as many walls as you like, go ahead, but I Know. You fear being known. Secrecy keeps you safe, for in being known by another person on an intimate level, you expose yourself only to pain. It's almost sad, really, that you felt this way. If only you could have known what power you had the chance to hold. In perpetuating such terror, you opened yourself up to so much, but like some kind of fool you decided to remain merely another simple bystander on the street, one man out of a swarming mass of thousands. A member of the ensemble. It's only fair all that potential should be redistributed to someone who really needs it, to someone who will use it to further a cause more important than you could ever imagine. There are not many things you imagine. And so as ashes return to ashes so the pained to pain returns, the ever-watched and ever-known and ever-understood returns to the secrecy and silence to which he was born, forever to remain unknown, a necessary sacrifice to further a mission of knowledge exposed. A life spent wasted in obscurity is taken from its rightful soul and lifted into brightness, into Sight and as the wasted soul decays at last, its final Knowledge is of-”</strong></p>
<p>He doesn't get to finish the statement. Or the <strong>Statement</strong>, rather. He's been too slow, gotten too lax in his old age and allowed himself the luxury of languidity about this crucial task . For all his talk of waste and foolishness, he must feel really dumb right now. Actually fuck ambiguity he does. Loser.</p>
<p>Elias screams himself awake, shooting upwards with his arms thrashing violently and throwing Wright to the side, the eye already caught in his fingers yanked along with it. Elias screams again at the pain. Wright snarls on the ground. <em>Stupid.</em> As he tries to wriggle into a less undignified position, Elias stumbles to his feet and staggers around blindly, finally bringing his hands to his eyes to rub away some perceived blindness and screaming again when his right hand sinks right into the socket, pressing angrily on the freshly torn nerves. Jonah Knows his pain, drinks it down like cough syrup while he hisses for Elias to shut up and stop screaming. The younger man's left eye finally clears but continues to cry. The tears from the right are washed dark and lost in the flow of blood. Wright crushes the eye between his palms. It takes so much more energy than he'd thought. Elias looks down at him with a gaze full of uncertainty and blind trust, even now, as if even now he's still trying to puzzle out how this had happened, how Wright could have betrayed him. He chokes out the long-dead man's name in desperate confusion. He looks so <em>lost</em>. Fury rises in Jonah.</p>
<p>"No," Jonah sneers. Elias hears and fears but doesn't understand, could never have <em>possibly</em> understood and Jonah is so impossibly angry, seething with so much white-hot rage as the world moves in a hyper-sped-up circuit of cold lines and stark contrast around his pulsing, writhing anger. In the most explicit of detail, Elias looks down at his hands and the blood on them, throat closing around another scream. He'd never wanted this. No, even that is wrong. He'd never even considered not to want this. He shakes, back hitting the grey brick of the wall behind him, knees failing. His head shakes. Does he even know it's shaking? He needs to leave, to go, to get out, to be anywhere but here, every cell in his body screams for escape from this pain and torturous confusion as Wright swallows words like bile, exhausted and weak in his old age. Elias' throat releases a strangled sob. The side of his face throbs from forehead to cheekbone. He stumbles about the small room, finding the staircase finally and bracing a hand on the brick as he half-sprints, half-falls down the steps.</p>
<p><em>Get out get out get out get out</em>-he can feel the fingers in his eyesocket, the greedy, grasping need to be inside his head, to take from him. Not from him even, moreso to take <em>of</em> him, ripping off pieces of his body for its own need. He mutters mindlessly trough the tunnels, somehow finding himself back in the archive. How long had he wandered in the dark? Time fails.</p>
<p>He keeps running. Blood splatters a shelf. Elias falls against the one opposite, babbling. There are fingers in his eyes, in his mouth, up his nose, prodding deep into his ear canals. Something old and angry wants in, feels <em>entitled</em> to be inside his body. He beats at his skull and he dashes throughout the labyrinth of paper. The world pulses light and dark, never quite coming into focus, every floor tile always just a bit further than he expects it to be, every breath scratching his screamed-out lungs raw. He runs. His balance is offset. With every blink he expects somehow to see clearly but it never comes, his vision never manages to triangulate quite the way it should.</p>
<p>He knows, on a certain level, as he throws himself against another shelf just to stay upright as he heaves himself unsteadily forward, why he cannot see, why he will never see properly again.</p>
<p>But how do you reconcile with something like that?</p>
<p>Elias runs and runs. He can't see the door, but he somehow knows when he crashes through it that he's out. He continues to run until long after his lungs have failed.</p>
<p>----</p>
<p>
  <span>He stands in the gas station bathroom, in front of the mirror. The light flickers and resumes its steady brightness, its hum-buzz just hovering on the edge of overwhelming, a sensation only worsened by the thick stench of blood in his nostrils. Elias looks in the mirror, on one hand knowing what he'll see, but on the other dreading the idea of actually seeing it. It would be so easy to simply buy a coffee, go home, and pretend this whole business was only a bad dream or some shit. Well, easier mentally at least. Physically though he would obviously die in like five seconds.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Obviously, what has just happened to him will have consequences, whether he signed up for them or not, but as much as he'd like to say that having not signed up for them absolves him of responsibility, part of him still insists on guilt. Not to mention the fact that he still has to staunch his wound, which makes it harder to ignore.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He pulls the hood down with bloody hands. It would make a good scene in slow-mo, the perfect dramatic reveal, but no. He just blinks against the bathroom brightness and meets his own eyes.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Well, eye.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias isn't <em>stupid.</em> He knows what colour his own eyes were and always have been. Still it jars him somehow to find himself looking back. Though he supposes he hadn't truly known what to expect, he feels so lost, so distant from the concept of a fixed identity in the face of all that blood, the fact that Elias is still </span>
  <em>Elias</em>
  <span> hits him like a forceful pool wave to the chest with shocked relief. He blinks -winks, he guesses- and smiles shakily. His hands are shaking too, have been for a while. His whole body is quivering, twitching, ready to shatter. He hugs himself, arms almost flinching at the contact that is both a comfort and horribly overstimulating and laughs as his eye starts to sting with tears.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn't cry for long. In only a few seconds his shaking has calmed somewhat and he wipes snot and tears from the left side of his face, smearing it red. Despite his somewhat regained stability, he hesitates to touch the right. Though there's a layer of blood already dried dark, hard, and tacky on the skin, it's still flowing in a steady stream from his empty right eye socket, running faster now from the fresh tears. The smell is still strong enough to taste.  Elias takes a deep breath through his mouth, bracing his hands on the sides of the sink, and lets it out again. Drops of blood land in the sink with a gentle, intermittent pitter-pat. He knows he should try to stop the flow, he's already getting lightheaded, but damn if it isn't all he can do just to try to calm down instead of putting his fist through the mirror. Done that enough before at home and whatnot.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Raising his head to the ceiling to meet his reflection's eye from down the angle of their mutual nose, he lifts one hand to weakly paw at the mirror, a bit of an ordeal with his depth perception shot to hell as it is, covering the image of his empty socket with shaking, bloodstained fingers.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Blood tracks down his neck, pooling in the dips of his shoulder and collarbone and clinging stickily to his jaw. His hair is dark and matted with it. He never knew just how much blood could come out of a person, especially so small a hole as that usually occupied by an eye. Curious -and lightheaded- he sticks his tongue out and licks at the blood gathering at the corner of his mouth.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>For whatever reason this is what snaps him awake. Might be the iron on his tastebuds, might be just how fucking creepy it looks in the mirror. His former fragility and growing tentative confidence dissipate in another sudden resurgence of panic. Oh right. He's still slowly bleeding out. </span>
  <em>What am I doing? What the fuck? What the fuck?? </em>
  <span>His shoes slide and skid on the tile in his mad dash for the paper towel dispenser. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He balls up a wad of wet paper towel and tries to be gentle with the whole sticking-it-into-his-eyehole business but ends up crying out in pain anyway. The nerves are all hyperactive, burning and throbbing at the contact as he grits his teeth and presses the paper towel to the wound anyway. With time, he thinks, he'll get used to it and the pain will ebb. "With time" becomes a mantra. Elias returns to taking deep breaths, glaring into the mirror with one hand holding himself up on the sink and the other pressing the paper towel -already soaked through and dark- to his bleeding socket. He will survive. He </span>
  <em>will </em>
  <span>fucking survive this. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>This feels like a time to be coming up with a plan. Not a lot of Elias' life has been planned, this part especially. A plan for what? He asks himself. What do I do next? My boss just knocked me out, ranted for however long it took me to wake up about the concept of knowledge and tried to gouge out my eyes, what the hell am I supposed to do? Call the police?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe he should call the police.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>What would he do though? What would he tell them? "Yeah, my boss tried to gouge my eyes out. He got one. See? I don't. Haha. Anyway, I think he's off his rocker, lock him up, boys! What? Why did I, the only person with any blood on him, run from the scene of the crime, a highly populated building where I could have easily found a witness to back me up, and instead hide out in a 7-11 half a kilometre away? Well you see, I was scared." He shakes his head. Genius. If they don't suspect </span>
  <em>him</em>
  <span> of assault he'll be off to the looney bin before he can get a word in edgewise.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Sighing, he runs his free hand through his hair. What a mess. Both legally and literally. His face and hands, sopping with blood, finally seem to be finished shaking, but the shivers have tightened up into twitches that feel like they hit his whole body.  Elias looks in the mirror again.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He stops.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The line of blood running down his throat to his shoulders, which he'd thought would've been dry by now, continues to trickle ever liquid not down but </span>
  <em>across </em>
  <span>his collarbone, creeping into every dip of muscle and bone, darkening every minute stretch of skin. He watches with silent growing horror as the trail of blood tracks on, weaving slowly, wetly around his neck like a collar, or maybe even a noose. When it comes full circle it doesn't stop, continuing to wind around and around his neck, higher and higher until nothing of himself that he can see in the glass isn't red. His shoulders twitch violently. The smell is heavier now than ever, as if every molecule of air were nothing but blood. Elias opens his mouth -why, he doesn't know, to yell or to scream or maybe even to puke, it's more likely every second that he's about to puke- to see his teeth already dark and slick with the stuff. He stumbles backwards, licking them. It's no trick- he tastes the salt and iron sure as anything. Gagging, he spits into the sink.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He spits again. And again. And <em>again and again and again</em> until the basin is just as bloody as he is but his mouth is <em>still</em> full of blood. If Elias were a less prideful man he would wail but all he manages is a strangled keening noise. Frantic, he reaches for the faucet lever. Water spills out, stuttering at first because the pressure is shitty, and washes away down the drain in a pinkish whirl leaving a hole in the thick layer of bloody spit. Almost laughing with relief, Elias drops his wadded paper towel and sticks both hands under the water. He really does laugh now. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He gulps down handful after greedy handful of cold, blessedly clear water until he can no longer taste metal. The growing panic of watching blood consume his skin dies down as he washes it away, an action that should have seemed obvious without the veil of choking terror and confusion. He rips off more paper towel and washes his face and neck before pressing another fresh paper wad to his socket. It still hurts, but honestly? He's glad to be able to focus on the pain instead of....</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Nah. No way in hell is he going to dwell on what just happened. He'll have a panic attack and he's pretty sure he's already overstayed his welcome here. There is still <em>something</em> inside his skull even now, so far away, caressing the muscle inside his cheeks, petting the underside of the back of his head, tracing behind his ears. Every time he turns his head away, he butts into more of the flesh inside his own, greedily holding and pulling and inspecting the lobes of his brain.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>When Elias is finally clean -save for his clothing- and pressing his third set of fresh paper towels to his face, he flips open his phone to check for, well, anything he might have missed. He's shocked to see that the time reads seven-fifty.  He didn't know he'd been here for….</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>How long </span>
  <em>had</em>
  <span> he been here? He had gotten to James' office at about two-thirty. The incident would have happened at about three but that's a much looser guess. Elias has been bleeding continuously for over four hours.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He should be dead, right?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span>How long does it take for a person to bleed out? Elias racks his brain. About an hour right, depending on the injury? No wait, it was way less than that. Wasn't it? No, it was. Right? He shakes his head rapidly, pulling at his hair. </span><em>Stupid!</em> <span>Why didn't he try to stop the blood flow sooner! Even panicked as he was, he should have had the good sense to know that losing copious amounts of blood was a bad thing! Grunting, he briefly pulls away the paper towel to see his socket. Yup. Still bleeding. Wow, shocker. He curses under his breath. </span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias covers his wound again, pulls his hood back over his head, and stalks out into the 7-11. The bathroom is left still stained with blood, but yeah. He's fucking done with that. He buys a bandage kit and a coffee that he probably won't drink until the next morning when it'll be cold, and leaves, chest still heaving. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He hears someone open a door and scream right as the front door blows shut. </span>
</p>
<p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>----</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The minutes and hours and days blur together like a fever dream. While he'd planned to cover his eye until it stopped bleeding and return to the public eye, Elias soon loses hope of the blood flow ceasing. On the bright side, he loses the fear of bleeding out soon after. If he hasn’t died yet, he probably isn’t going to. Not from blood loss at least. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And yeah, okay, he should probably be a bit more worried than he is -and he</span>
  <em> is </em>
  <span>worried- but you kind of distantly accept that some bloody weird shit happens in the world after seeing the kind of things that get brought into artefact storage and the kind of precautions that get taken in storing them. Still, it’s different to actually be </span>
  <em>part</em>
  <span> of it. It’s beyond jarring to become the victim of....whatever the hell is going on. Once the adrenaline rush has long worn off, though, Elias is at a loss for how to react.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He’s expecting to get a phone call from James -or whoever he </span>
  <em>really</em>
  <span> is- or at least from his supervisor Madeleine about missing work without calling in, but his phone doesn’t ring once. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>At one point when he’s standing in front of his bathroom mirror, bleeding of course, his eyes close in a violent twitch and open to a clean face that startles him into another jolt. The blood creeping perpetually down his right cheek is gone altogether for a single second before a fresh wave comes. And it </span>
  <em>does</em>
  <span> come, but that one second is enough. Elias staggers in place and chokes. The warning sting of tears tickles angrily behind his eye, his empty socket already filling. It's too much, too soon, </span>
  <em>much</em>
  <span> too soon, emotion and sensation building up in a painful spiral with no crescendo, one second of blissful, terrifying mercy from himself and suddenly he's reminded of every feeling, physical or otherwise that has so much as brushed against conscious thought all at once, climbing over each other like crabs in a bucket.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The blood inches down his cheek ever-so-slowly, spreading unnaturally in weblike patterns that end in a shape like a hand caressing his face, warm as springtime and pulsing gently. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias punches his mirror.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>--------</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span>He learns to distinguish the difference between dreams and waking reality far too late, already too at ease with the reverie between hallucinations of holding his own guts in his right hand and </span><em>actually</em> <span>holding his own guts in his right hand. His skin splits under the strain of the muscles swelling up round and lumpy like tumours underneath. In dreams, the creases between fibres blink open like eyes milky-white and blind yet staring, staring into his own. Awake, they simply ooze pus, equally white sometimes and bright yellow others. He closes the eye in his skull and stands before the mirror but the eye in his throat cannot see for him. </span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It is not his eye. It is not even his throat.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias loses language, becomes a crawling, bleeding, drooling thing, a butchered animal, a lonesome clump of cells to which no name belongs. Spit and snot track down his chin.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But it is not his chin.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span>His cells run at a constant one hundred percent, buzzing like flies, like gas station lights. But they are not his cells. His cells are not his own. His body is not his own.</span><span>What is it to own? He loses track. He loses his </span><em>he</em><span>, leaving a writhing, pleading </span><em>it</em> <span>in his wake. It is alone, known by no one and owned by nothing but it is known, it is seen, it-</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It lost all rights to itself some short time ago. It may have forced out the intruder, but it was too late; it was already stolen from itself. There was nothing left of itself to defend but a husk, a skeleton empty of substance, a rotten, hollowed-out growth, a castle from which the king has escaped. The butcher may have been called away before he could prepare the meat, but the lamb was already dead. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It jolts awake. </span>
  <em>He</em>
  <span> jolts awake, that is to say. He had a name.... Elias! Yes, there you go, <em>Elias</em> jolts awake. There is no visible distinction from the dream but he feels it somehow. He’s practically an expert at this point. If you're ever in a pinch and can't tell if you're awake, just ask this guy, he knows all the hot tips. It must be, at least. His dreams, vicious as they are are angry in a soft, distant way, as if he doesn't truly control his body and only occupies it to keep it from rusting from lack of use and now, he </span>
  <em>hurts</em>
  <span><em>.</em> Whether or not he is the one holding the reins now, he is the one feeling the resistance on the other end. As a soldier dies in a war he knows not the reason for, feeling the repercussions of a battle of someone else's device, so does Elias feel the pain that this body is in, regardless of whether or not it is his own. It must be. Who else's?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He can get philosophical about the body later but right now, it smells like shit. Well, like old blood, but it's a bad smell, palpable in his nostrils and warm on every inch of his skin. His tacky fingers protest the motions of pulling him apart. It takes him a handful of minutes of sitting up in bed, bleeding uselessly, to remember the normal human response to feeling unclean.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias turns off every light in the flat and closes all the blinds before he manages to get up the courage to strip. His clothes, sticky and hardened in places as they are, don't hold a candle to his skin. The blood feels like an exoskeleton. It continues to fall as he stands there blind in the dark. It's not even all coming solely from his eye socket anymore, he can feel his pulse thrumming loud and warm in rings around his forehead and throat, though of course the blood is too thickly layered even now for him to truly feel where liquid still seeps from his skin. As far as he knows, every pore is bleeding. He’s going to need to be in there for a fucking week to scrape off this much muck.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The bathroom floor is covered in blood. When he shifts his weight, the side of his left foot presses to what feels at first like a crack in the tile.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Until it opens up and a small, round shape, firm but gelatinous, rolls against his foot.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias gets into the shower. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter Two: It Gets Worse (and Worse and Worse and Worse)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It’s Gertrude, the head archivist who finally finds him, preceded by a delicate knock. When he won’t bring himself to rise from his position lying slack against the living room wall practically stuck there with all the blood, to answer, he hears a huff and a dull, heavy </span>
  <em>thunk!</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Gertrude pushes open the door and marches in with a hammer held loosely in one hand. She exudes a judging calm, that constant, intimidating efficacy of hers. Elias watches her out of the corner of his eye, too tired to raise his head. Gertrude surveys his flat coolly. If she notices him she doesn’t seem to count him among the things worth her focus, cataloguing him rather as another part of the veil of dead gore that covers the flat. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Good heavens,” she sighs. From her mouth it sounds like an exasperated “Fucking hell.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias had only met Gertrude Robinson a few times before. He watches her pace about, eventually opening the messenger bag hanging at her side to swap out her hammer for a tape recorder. She presses the on button. The faintest crackling of static fills the room. Elias feels his throat constrict slightly for some reason beyond himself. A sound rises in his chest but chokes and dies in his throat.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Personal investigation into case number....” she hesitates as if she has forgotten. “Case of Elias Bouchard, Gertrude Robinson recording. I have gained entry to Mr. Bouchard’s flat. For the purposes of this investigation, I had prepared a series of questions, but it appears, now that I am here, that I arrived too late, as Mr. Bouchard appears to already be-”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias makes a desperate grunting noise that comes out barely louder than a hum and leads into a cough that scratches his throat and chest raw. Spit thick with blood and bile runs down his chin. Gertrude turns to him, startled slightly. Her eyes scan him and seem to recognise finally that something in the room is not quite dead, but that impossible analytical cool never leaves her face. “It appears I spoke too soon.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Hm-” he chokes on the syllables, vocal cords rusty with misuse. And probably more blood. It's nothing but blood all the way down these days. “'m alive,”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I see that." she says. "Hello Elias."</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"'lo."</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She approaches. She smells like old paper and dust and that indescribable but distinct and distantly comforting old-woman smell, a few years too early and so impossibly faint yet such a blessed relief from the palpable fumes of blood in the air. "Are you able to talk? I have some things to ask you."</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"Not well. Maybe la'er." He tries to raise his hand to scratch at his face, but drops it to the sticky ground and coughs up another glob of sick red drool. Gertrude sighs. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"I see. Well, in that case, I suppose it can wait for a bit. How long do you think you will need to....compose yourself?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias lets his head loll to the side. His hair, matted and sticky with blood, gives a slight tug, protesting the motion. The blood still oozing steadily  from his right socket drips onto his shoulder, freshly dampening the crust of blood already there. "Dunno."</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Gertrude sighs again as if horribly put-upon. "I'll get you some water. Stand up." She sets the tape recorder on the counter, moving about his flat with brisk motions describable only as no-nonsense. Her presence leaves no room for nonsense, almost overbearing even in its simplicity. She somehow knows how to navigate his kitchen without explanation. Elias, cowed into action, pulls himself to his feet. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"Why're you here?" he asks after clearing his throat and coughing more. He flexes his limbs. His throat itches. The wet, fresh blood itches. The long-dried blood itches. The skin that has begun to peel like bark itches. The swollen muscle underneath itches. <em>He</em></span>
  
  <span>itches.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"I have been investigating James Wright and the Institute, among other things of course," she adds with a tilt of the head and a significant look that's half derisive and half conspiratory. "For quite some time now. Though it was rather low on my list of priorities. There are many things that need my attention, and in truth I saw very little need to spare any attention for the matter. I'll admit my suspicions were piqued when I heard word of your promotion, but I still didn't see any reason to get involved. Until you disappeared, that is." She places a glass of water on the bloody counter with a </span>
  <em>clink.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He nods like he totally hadn't zoned out for most of what she'd said. "My promotion?"</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"Why would someone from artefact storage, who had only been with the Institute for five years, hardly ever spoken with James, and showed up to work high for two entire months be promoted to Head out of apparently nowhere? There's been no other talk of Wright leaving his post."</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>While Elias ruminates on this, Gertrude picks up her tape recorder and steps around the apartment, touching the walls tentatively yet still with that unperturbed, analytical cool, as if between the blood and her finger the blood will come away from the encounter the worse off. “The flat is drenched with blood,” she speaks into the tape “Covering almost every surface. It appears to be distributed throughout near the entire flat, thicker in places implying several layers deposited over a length of time, which, given Mr. Bouchard’s prolonged absence from work, could mean-” she stops short and turns around to look at him again. “Is it all yours?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” he says a bit awkwardly. It may not be true wholly, but it is true in the way that she means.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Good. That’s for the best.” Gertrude goes on. “At least the damage you’ve caused is minimal, then. Madeleine said you’ve not been to work in exactly two weeks. Do you know how much of that time was spent here?” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He mulls it over. One hand twitches. “Prob’ly all of it? I don’t remember leaving. Or. Very much of anything at all. Been kind of a blur.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Nodding, she turns back to the tape and the wall. “Good. Almost certainly means activity of the Flesh, judging by the sheer volume of blood and lack of anything else of notable significance.” she seems not to lose her train of thought, but to briefly set it aside. “Hm. Though it's common and even expected to see the Eye sharing a prominent place in cases with equally heavy involvement of other fears, in a case regarding the Institute itself it seems unusual that Viscera of all things should be so prominent.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias watches her mutter, hearing but not understanding. Because like. What. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Gertrude disappears down the hallway. He hears her continued mutterings into her tape recorder as she pokes through his bathroom. After she returns, setting the tape on the counter again and taking a long drink from the yet-untouched glass of water, she stops and looks pensive. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What happened to you?” she asks, turning to look him forcefully in the eye.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a simple question and not even one asked particularly rudely, but it chills him. He has a sudden, indescribable feeling in the back of his head, tucked neatly behind rational thought and gently but firmly prodding it. The words he gives her don’t feel like his own, they couldn’t be. But that's a familiar feeling now. Plus, it’s the most clearly he’s been able to speak since....well. What happened. He'll take it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span><strong>“Mr. Wright called me to his office,”</strong> </span>
  <span>he begins </span>
  <strong>“Well, he sent me an email to come to his office. It said ‘as soon as possible’, but I didn’t see it until my lunch break when I went to check on the break room computer, and I took my break an hour late that day too. This would’ve been, er, March fifteenth? Yeah, March fifteenth. So when I saw the email, I panicked, obviously. I had only ever seen Mr. Wright at my interview and in passing but he’s....he was my boss, so I thought I must have done something wrong. I didn’t know what, but the only thing I could think of was that I must be in trouble, not to mention I would be running late,  so I hauled ass.</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>Rosie told me not to worry though -I'm sure you know her, she's the brand new receptionist. She's actually quite nice- and to just head on in, he was already expecting me. I think I should have known then, at least a little bit, if not just what was about to happen to me -I don't think anyone could possibly have predicted that- at least that it was going to be something big. I remember, vaguely, she looked excited, proud perhaps, and gave me a little thumbs up as I passed her desk on my way to the stairs. So I went up and I knocked on the door, and he told me to come in.</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>It was....odd. You know how it is in the Institute, always just barely too bright, but for some reason I had always expected his office to be dim. I don't know why. I just had. That's probably part of the reason that it was such a shock going in there, I mean, other than the mortal terror that I was about to get fired for something I didn't even know I had done. I hadn't smoked -not pot at least, only cigarettes- in months, and aside from that I couldn't imagine a single thing I had ever done wrong at work. So I was half preparing an apology, admittedly half  a little indignant, but honestly I was mostly just confused. You get this idea into your head about a man like Wright, so old and posh and whatnot, he's a bit scary honestly. But it wasn't that bad. Bright. Not crazy bright, but I did have to adjust going in from the hallway, just different enough to notice. He was sitting in that huge, fancy old chair, and he was just setting down a pen as I walked in. I remember having the most distinct sensation for no reason I can recall that he wanted me to know that I hadn't inconvenienced him with my lateness. Not in a casually comforting way, though, in like a....like a smug, derisive way. He told me to have a seat. I sat down. There were papers on his desk, but they were all blank. Or at least I couldn't see anything on them from where I was sat. He asked me, before I could speak, what I thought I was in for. He specifically said that; "what do you think you're in for?" I think he was trying to make a joke. I felt like I was being toyed with, like he was cataloguing every minute reaction for his amusement. He made me feel young, and it felt, I don't know, exposing and a bit stomach-turning. I stammered out that I didn't know, and he grinned. He had been grinning for most of the meeting so far. He has the creepiest grin, you've probably seen it, maybe even see it all the time being Head Archivist and all, but I swear: whenever he looked at me he Looked at me and it scared me.</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>"Well," he said, a bit slowly and obviously still smiling "I wouldn't fret too much if I were you. You're here because I would like to offer you a promotion." I paused. I didn't know how many different positions are available in artifact storage, but even so I didn't really see what I had done to earn any kind of promotion. Besides, wouldn't Madeleine have been the one to promote me, as my more direct supervisor? Why would the institute's head need to get involved? I said something incredibly stupid. He grinned. If he heard me, he didn't seem to care. "How would you feel about being the head of the Magnus Institute?"</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>I was taken aback. I felt a bit winded, honestly. Why me? What had I done that was so impressive, that had given him even the vaguest impression that I would be a good fit to lead the institute? "It.... er it would be an honour," I said "But, if it's alright sir, why?" And he laughed. He stood up and walked to the window, leaning less on his cane than on the wall, and looked at me sidelong. "You look the part quite well for a start," and under that moustache his lips twitched upwards yet again, eyes still locked on my face. "And your record is almost perfect. You seem to be a very hard worker, Mr. Bouchard. Not to mention....well, do you know of any better options?" Looking back the insult in that was probably intentional, but at the time, I thought that the embarrassment it caused me was my fault alone. He seemed like an awful condescending gent overall, but he was still my boss, so there wasn’t anything I could say. He sat down again while I was still gaping stupidly and sighed. “I’m old, Elias.” he confessed. “I’m not going to last forever, and your hands are as good a pair as any to leave the care of my Institute in. So, what do you say?”</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>I said yes. Why not, right? I know, I know, pretty stupid reason for accepting such a huge offer but what does the institute head even do? All i knew was that it would mean authority and probably more money, and doesn’t everyone want that, at least a little bit? Wright grinned like I’d never seen a man grin before. “Perfect,” he said, low and smooth and like he was scheming, but of course I didn’t suspect a thing, too high off nerves and the promise of my new position. He told me he already had all the paperwork all ready and slid a stack across the desk to me. </strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>I know that I should have read it all. But he scared me, even then, and the idea of him staring at me, smiling, for however many hours it would take me to read the thousands of lines of fine print was frankly worse than exploding on the spot to me at that moment. So I just signed my name on all the empty lines.</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>He reached out to shake my hand. It was cold and dry. He stood up then and came around the desk to clap me on the back too, and it was more than a little weird the degree of camaraderie it implied seeing as I’d only properly spoken to the man for twenty bloody minutes.  “Now that we’re all set, there’s a little institute secret I’d like to share with you, since I’ve already got you here and all.” he announced. He left the room, leaning a little more heavily on his cane and beckoning me to follow with a slight nod. I did, obviously. Wright took me down to the Archive first, then into a little corridor inside. “I know it’s a bit... well, spooky for lack of a better word,” he said. “But I promise, it’ll all be fine. Really, you won’t have anything to worry about at all.” I didn’t notice at the time the emphasis he put on “you.”</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>There were tunnels under the archive, looping and dropping and twisting about like intestines of brick and mortar all this time. They were dark, save for the flashlight he bid me to hold and even then anything outside the thin beam swarmed with a darkness so thick it seemed to be something of its own and not merely the absence of light. I coughed more than a few times on the dust. </strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>We got there, finally. A huge, hollow chamber, walls a honeycomb of cells. From the center rose a tower so tall I felt dwarfed. It seemed to arch upwards, the entire room curving around it if not for an actual roundness then simply to heighten it as the focal point. I’d read about this kind of structure before once, I just couldn’t remember the name. Wright marched on steadily, raising one hand to beckon me to follow him as he mounted the stairs up the side of the tower. “Watch your step.”</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>I’ll admit, I had already been scared, but the idea of going up there? No way in hell. I stood firm. Sighing, he turned around. </strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>“You’re not afraid now, are you?” his voice had lost all pretense. He wasn’t subtly mocking me anymore, he was just cruel and hard. “What would your father say?”</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>The memories that came swarming up like vomit, the years of confusion and anger, the fighting, the resentment, the terrified crushing of any softness, the yearning not to be the wretched thing you are, not to be at all. I choked. “How-”</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>“Stop being pathetic. Come along.”</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>I came along. I almost threw up upon arrival. </strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>There was a dead body in the tower. Might still be there. It sat on an old chair in the center of that small room, bent and limp and crumpled like wet paper, every crease lined thickly with dust, and grinning. I don’t know how to say, what words to use to make it clear that this melted corpse didn’t smirk, didn’t smile, it grinned, wickedly. I turned to Wright to demand what the hell was going on, only to be hit in the back of my head.</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>I was knocked awake by noise and pain. It was all I could register, not the source, not the type of wound, just that it hurt like nothing I’d ever felt. I was more vaguely aware of liquid running down my face and of speaking. Wright speaking. “-Ashes so the pained to pain returns, the ever-watched and ever-known and ever-understood returns to the secrecy and silence to which he was born, forever to remain unknown, a necessary sacrifice to further a mission of knowledge exposed. A life spent wasted in obscurity is taken from its rightful soul and lifted into brightness, into Sight and as the wasted soul decays at last, its final Knowledge is of-”</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>I screamed. I couldn’t see, I flung myself about blindly, thrashing. I knocked him over I think, I heard the crash of a body on the ground as I stood from the hard ground. Red was all I could see. Wright was grunting. Something was dripping, some viscous liquid hitting the ground with deafening ripples that rang in my ears. My ears rang. My ears rang. I rubbed my eyes with my fists and screamed again, it burned, it burned, tears ran hot down my face, my right eye, my right eye-</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>I blinked my left eye clear to see Wright, crumpled on the ground with watery blood pouring from a clutched fist. The world, only half seen, slowed down. I wavered on my feet. He looked up at me and bared his teeth and the way his eyes seemed to strike me made every inch of my skin itch, turned the half-seen slow-motion world to a blur around his machine clarity. </strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>“Wright?” I choked.</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>“No.” he sneered.</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>I brought shaking fingers to my right eyelid, still closed, and lay them against the skin.</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>They fell right into my skull.</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>I ran until I couldn’t anymore. I don’t know when or how I left the institute, but I ended up in a different part of London entirely. Still bleeding, of course. I bandaged it up but it’s been going steady ever since.” </strong>he sighs. <strong>“Yeah. I guess....I guess that’s the story.”</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Gertrude is silent for a moment and hmms thoughtfully while Elias sags under a sudden exhaustion. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“And....the eyes?” she asks, almost bored.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She points at Elias’ arm. He looks at his arm. His arm looks at him. His arm blinks. The floor behind it blinks a second later. They're both silent for a very long few moments.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"They come and go." Elias finally says.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"I see." Gertrude nods. She looks judgemental.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"I thought they were hallucinations," he continues "I try to blind them sometimes, stabbing and whatnot. It hurts when they're the ones on me. But everything hurts anyway, so."</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"And you can't see out of any of them?"</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"No."</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She hums, tapping her chin "A good sign. Not for you, I suppose but at large."</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Swallowing down a groan, Elias flails his hands a bit in frustration. "See but like, you keep saying things like that. What are you talking about? What is Viscera? What the fuck do you mean by "good signs" like, who or what is this good for? What is happening to me? You seem to know, care to share?"</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Gertrude regards him for a moment with her eyebrows furrowed slightly. After a brief second, she sighs, props her glasses up on her forehead, and rubs her temples. She tells him about the nature of fear, about sentience, about a lot of things really, but mostly about fear.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s the fear of death, as patiently passive yet all-consuming as death itself, a spectre over all else. There’s the desolation left when beloved things are destroyed or perverted, exemplified in trial by fire, and a different kind of pain, wounds and gashes and uncomfortable questions about self-control amidst senseless violence. There’s even more uncomfortable questions about self-control, about the responsibility you hold if free will is a lie, about being a puppet moving on the strings of fate. There are more puppets; the uncanny valley kind, and bugs and rot and darkness and things too huge to understand and things that can’t be understood for other reasons and claustrophobia and autophobia and the primal terror of prey. That one is overwhelmingly animal, she remarks, but it does bleed into human fears too. Not so neatly, though, as the horror of a lamb on its way to slaughter.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>At first glance, there’s the obvious; blood and gore, lack of autonomy, the inevitability of one’s own death and mutilation. But deeper still runs the repulsed fear of one's own death and mutilation for the sake of being <em>used</em>, of being a nameless thing of lesser sentience and worth, a breathing object, of the physical nature of one’s own body, of being gutted to feed the bigger fish.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And that fear, that idea of being an owned object bleeds nicely into that of being a watched subject. Of being known and understood and flayed bare for the pleasure of a judgemental voyeur. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Oh</em>
  <span> Elias thinks, gears clicking together in his head. Also in his head is a brief thought of how great a blunt would be right now. “And that one....that’s the one the Institute works for? The Eye?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“In a sense, yes.” Gertrude nods. Midway through her explanation, she’d taken out a notebook and began to work on her plans for another of her many, many projects. Saving the world and all that. “To my knowledge it was founded by Jonah Magnus in order to collect Statements from those who had had encounters with other fears, usually in a physical form otherwise that would mean every living being on earth, as a way of stealing those experiences to feed them to Beholding instead.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“So then when Wright took me to that tower place thing, he wanted to turn me into....some kind of servant-monster of the eye, right?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“More likely only your body. You yourself seemed to be an obstacle that needed to be removed, based on his statement within your Statement.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“And that’s where I slipped into the Flesh instead.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes. I can only imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t woken up in time and he’d succeeded. Although....”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She trails off, looking both calculating and absent. It’s a way of hers, Elias is coming to learn. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Although?” he prods.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Although in my experience, the Eye has little want for subjects with no thoughts and actions of their own. Even if they do collect the stories of others, like I do, those marked by the Watcher are always watched themselves. I can’t imagine an empty vessel would make for a very entertaining viewing experience. My sight is limited in the tunnels so I can’t be sure what exactly happened outside your extremely subjective testimony, but it just doesn’t seem to make much sense why Wright would seek to hollow you out instead of marking you. Which you already were, being an Institute employee, though not so much as you would have been had you worked in the Archive.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias ruminates on this.“I don’t know as much as you about this, obviously, but could he have been trying to put something else inside me instead? Like....I don’t know, eyes? Paper?"</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"I meant “hollowing you out” in a more.... metaphysical sense. Your soul, if you believe in that sort of thing. I don't see how you could expect him to gut you with his bare hands, especially at his age."</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"I was being sarcastic. Hmm. Maybe it was some kind of possession? One of these....fears, entities, whatever's most accurate -it's the fear of death. If their manifestations can take different forms, surely dead folks' souls aren't too far-fetched an idea."</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"Surely." Gertrude looks up briefly from her notebook to check her watch. “I do have another appointment, in a manner of speaking, to be at soon, so I should be leaving.” She pauses to look at him, then reaches into her bag and sets four tape recorders on the one corner of the counter miraculously not sticky with blood. “You want more answers, I know, so I advise you to look into the matter yourself. Use these. Getting involved with, for lack of better words, </span>
  <em>all this,</em>
  <span> tends to have a high mortality rate and it could help my own investigations if you left your findings behind.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>If he blanches at that, either it escapes her all-consuming notice or she doesn’t particularly care. He starts to wonder what keeps happening to her archival assistants.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>----</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Gertrude leaves. He gets it, of course. She has bigger fish to fry. It's still uncomfortable, though, to be suddenly made aware of and thrust into a strange and terrifying new world and have one's sole source of explanation be ripped away moments after its arrival. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias sits in the main room of his flat bleeding for a very long time. Eventually, he thinks, he'll have to do something. But like. What even is there to do? Besides, he has a lot to deal with at the moment. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He could really use a smoke.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Eventually, he pries himself from the floor and plods to the kitchen to grab a knife. The motions of blinding have become routine at this point, but the pain does not lessen without the suspense. If anything, it gets worse every time, ever-growing and shifting to better suit whatever fresh ideal of torture will hurt him most.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He can still feel the shapes in his head that he knows now cannot be fingers, even down his throat and at his collarbone now too, tracing the line where his gums meet his teeth, prodding softly, almost reverently at the flesh behind where his right eye once was. They don't feel like any recognisably human appendages. They feel disjointed, angled in the wrong places and attached where joints were absolutely not there before. On the rare occasions when he can bring himself to look in the mirror, he can see the lumps of knuckles moving around just under his skin. On the even rarer occasions when he sleeps peacefully, it is because the coating of blood now perpetual on his skin is warm, thrumming with his pulse, and as thick and solid as a human embrace.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span>He doesn't want to know what his inside looks like now. As bad as the outside does, it can only be worse. Much worse. Elias thinks of Wright and </span><em>loathes</em> <span>him. It's him who exposed him to this....this </span><em>thing</em> <span>that has taken him over, or worse still, this thing that </span>he<span> has </span><em>become, </em>b<span>ecause as much as his own body terrifies him, what scares him most is the thought that it really is just that: his own body, just him torturing himself alone in his flat, not some complex body-horror monster possessing him that can be removed via some sort of advanced surgery. As far as he knows, nothing was put inside him, only taken out.</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The idea that this all isn't just something happening </span>
  <em>to</em>
  <span> him, but what and who he </span>
  <em>is</em>
  <span>, is an unbearable one.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Luckily, he manages to find the weed he'd had stashed away all this time and long forgotten about and forgets about all of this for a little while. His lungs are still normal enough to smoke at least, and that's a comfort.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>The comfort doesn't last. That too is kind of a blessing, as the sudden break from his newfound routine of pain throws Elias off. It feels weird, going a few hours without suffering. Like constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>So he drops the shoe. Both of them. And sticks his feet in them -woah, he's wearing socks now! And clean clothes! And a jacket! And a rucksack!</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias finishes applying his bandages. Blood is already soaking through, predictably, but it isn't dripping down his face anymore and that's what matters. He doesn't care about actually stopping the blood flow, only about looking presentable enough to be seen in public. He even made an eyepatch with an old bandana to cover the bandage. It's a lot of preparation. And nerves. And a strange sort of underlying excitement, morbid as it is. He feels like a teenage girl about to go on her first date again. In a way, he is on his way to a date. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>A date with destiny! One he plans to end </span>
  <em>horribly</em>
  <span>. For someone else.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Deep breaths, he reminds himself. The knuckled but otherwise indefinite, vaguely appendage-like shapes under his skin squeeze his shoulders briefly when the thought of backing out crosses his mind. It was an encouraging gesture of his mom's when he was a teen. Call that self-love.</span>
</p>
<p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As Elias locks his door, it occurs to him that he probably still smells like blood. Honestly at this point it's so constant that he doesn't even notice it, but other people undoubtedly would. Shit, he should've taken a full shower instead of just washing his face and hands. Too late now. if he doubles back he'll lose his nerve. Besides, it can't be </span>
  <em>that </em>
  <span>bad!</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It is absolutely that bad. Before he can even adjust his eyes to the sunlight after finally stepping outside, he's already accosted by a mother with a stroller eyeing him in a way that betrays wariness for both of their sakes. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe the eyepatch is a bit much. He pulls up his hood self-consciously. There's nothing he can do about the smell. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He takes his regular bus route. It's a bit of a ways to the Institute so he reviews his slapdash plan:</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Step one: arrive at the Institute.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Step two: find and confront Wright.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Step three: </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>....Okay so maybe he doesn’t know exactly what he’s going to do next. Really, he’s not even sure what “confronting” Wright will entail, nor what he’ll do if the man tries to finish what he started and succeeds this time. It’s actually a pretty shit plan. But it sure is </span>
  <em>something</em>
  <span>, and something is all he feels he really needs.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Ding! </em>
  <span>The bus doors open and close as someone new gets on the bus. Tyres sweep smooth and heavy metre by agonising metre over concrete, buildings roll past the grime-spattered windows like a tableau, somebody coughs a few seats back. Elias’ leg and thoughts bounce about anxiously. He resists the urge to shake his head. </span>
  <em>It’ll be fine,</em>
  <span> he tries to think, </span>
  <em>I have a plan and besides, the man’s crazy old anyway. Everything will be fine.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It has to. Right?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Finally, </span>
  <em>finally</em>
  <span> he can see his stop coming up. He reaches up to pull the bell and gets out with a mumbled “thanks.” It’s only a minute’s walk to the Institute from here. </span>
  <em>Deep breaths</em>
  <span><em>,</em> Elias reminds himself. His hand squeezes itself gently. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He hesitates for a moment before pulling one of the tape recorders Gertrude had given him and turning it on. It comes to life with a quiet whirr. He slips it back into his pocket.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The tall, heavy oak-glass-and-gold doors swing open with that familiar creak. Four hallways diverge from the foyer, one eastward, one westward, and two facing the door, leading deeper into the building’s innards. Between them, two staircases roll upwards to the second and third floors and between those in turn lies the front desk. A tapestry emblazoned with the Institute logo, a hunched owl with tiny pupils that seem to follow you swimming in its wide, angled eyes, is hung over it, seeming to drip down the imposingly high wall like sludge. His shoes -runners. His work shoes were stiff and crusty from -yep, you guessed it- blood and besides, it’s better to be over prepared than under prepared- make a dull but echoing </span>
  <em>thump </em>
  <span>on the glossy tan tiles, glistening like mirrors in the overwhelming light as he makes his way forward. It’s usually quiet in the Institute, he knows that subconsciously from five years of having worked here, but that doesn’t help to shove down the growing throb of hot panic in his chest. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Rosie glances up from her computer with a broad grin at his approach. “Morning, Mr. Bouchard! You had us worried for a bit there, glad to see you’re doing well!” her smile falters slightly in confusion. “Did something happen to your eye?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias almost wants to laugh at that. “Bit of an accident with some housework. Is Mr. Wright here? We ha-we have, er, </span>
  <em>business</em>
  <span><em>.</em>” Shit. He stuttered. Even if that was miraculously not suspicious, that was fuckin embrassing dude lmao</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Shockingly yes, he still is.” She resumes her typing as she speaks. “He said he already had retirement plans but he sure is milking his time here. He’s in the office, packing up his things. Go right on in.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He thanks her and turns down the hallway to her left. His palms are sweaty. His knees are weak. His arms pulse, swollen bulbs of muscle in the most awkward places thrumming with his heartbeat. A thick oak door with a gold-plated doorplate emblazoned with “Institute Head” and his name, smaller, underneath arcs up in front of him. Light seeps from under it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias’ shoulders squeeze themselves in encouragement again. He opens the door. It feels too quick.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Wright is most certainly not packing up his things. He is sitting in the armchair behind the desk, legs crossed, fingers steepled on the desk, and smiling with an absolutely revolting smugness. Elias narrows his eye.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Elias.” Wright greets with a honeyed lilt. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“James.” Elias replies.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“So you’ve finally come back,” the old man cocks his head slightly, still smirking. “I trust you’ve been doing well?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias doesn’t reply. The door falls shut behind him seemingly of its own accord. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Well. It’s good to see you again. I do hope you’re alright with my still being here, this being your office now and all. I have many precious memories here. It’s taking me some time to reconcile with them all.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Glaring now, his fear slowly shrinking to share its space with anger, Elias balls his hands into fists. “What did you do to me?” he growls. His throat feels drowned but he knows all too well at this point that it cannot be simply spit.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>If it’s even possible, James’ smile grows, eyebrows raising in question. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What I mean?” Elias spits incredulously “I mean what you took me down into the tunnels under the Institute to do! I mean when you </span>
  <em>gouged my fucking eye out</em>
  <span>!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, that.” he sighs “I was hoping you could be more understanding.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span>“</span><em>What</em> <span>are you</span> <em>talking</em><span> about?!”</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Your promotion, obviously. What, you didn’t think it would come without its challenges? Being the Head of the Magnus Institute is an enormous responsibility, Elias, and you’re horribly underqualified.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Then </span>
  <em>why-</em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“There has been a reason for everything I have ever done,” James -but obviously not- snaps, eyes wide and bright and jaw set. “All of my actions have been for a purpose, a purpose that you could never understand. The Archivist may have illuminated you to the true nature of the world but there are things that even she doesn’t know and </span>
  <em>you</em>
  <span>, you, Elias, know nothing of the world that you are in, so how could you possibly understand my purpose enough to judge it? I serve something greater than you can ever comprehend, I </span>
  <em>am </em>
  <span>something you can never comprehend. I am working toward a legacy that cradles the fate of this plane in its cupped palm. I gave you the chance to be a part of that legacy and you chose to run away. Now you are incompatible for the task.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“However, you are still the official Head of this Institute. I suppose that’s what I get for prioritising haste over caution. I am not immune to pride, of course. Still, excuses aside this puts me in a pinch. As you haven’t chosen a successor and I am still alive and well, it </span>
  <em>should</em>
  <span> fall back into my hands in the event of your death, but bureaucracy can be tricky sometimes, so it would be prudent to keep plausible deniability surrounding your whereabouts while I get all the paperwork sorted. Of course, you do seem to be rather....</span>
  <em>uncooperative</em>
  <span> now so for the sake of my mission, this is all necessary. I hope you understand.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What will be neces-” Elias reels as James pulls a pistol from the drawer in front of him. “Woah! What the hell?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“A pity it came to this. You really are an absolutely gorgeous man but there’s no point in keeping spoiled meat in the pantry. Goodbye Elias.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He cocks the gun and aims for Elias’ chest. Before the latter can even blink, he fires.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The shot rings in his ears long, loud and high. Blood sprays the floor around him and seeps hot and thick from his chest but too stunned to move, Elias can’t even feel the pain. This is what it’s come to, he thinks. This is what death is like. It’s not as painful as he had always thought.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It isn’t until the world focuses again and James’ snarling face registers that Elias realises that that’s because he isn’t dying.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The bullet clatters on the floor behind him. Elias meets James’ eyes and can’t resist the urge to grin. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>James frantically reloads as Elias clambers over the desk. They wrestle for the gun, Elias pinning James to the chair with sheer rage and his knees on either side and trying to wrench it from his grasp while James tries with all the ferocity of a toddler clutching an older sibling’s toy to keep it in his grip. The chair tips backwards, hitting the floor loudly. James’ head cracks against the back and he screams, gargling. Elias twists the gun from him and tosses it aside. With one fist full of James’ shirt he rears back with the other. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Elias wait-”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck you!” He punches him in the nose. It falls inward under his knuckles like crumbling rocks. The old man whines. Blood covers his moustache, mingles with tears and streaks his face and Elias’ fist. As Elias is rearing up again, chest heaving, blood roaring in his ears like praise, James' eyes blow wide, pupils pinprick small in red-ringed wells of an impossibly bright bottle green and his smile returns as wide as ever and full of teeth slick with blood.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you going to kill me, Elias?” he asks smugly. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias punches him again. James throws his head back with a groan and looks at him down the bridge of his nose. “I -ah-ahh!- I thought so. I just hope you’ve got a-” another punch. “A good story for when you leave this room.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Stopping short with his arm already cocked, Elias hisses through his teeth. The rush of blood in his ears softens immediately from encouragement to comfort, the bones below his skin petting his head, squeezing his arms with reverent gentleness. Of course. </span>
  <em>Of course </em>
  <span>he can’t just kill him and leave, from an outside perspective he’ll have murdered a defenceless old man out of nowhere. James looks smug. “Thought so.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias stands up and looks down at the pathetic old man sprawled between his feet. He looks dead already, so frail and white and wrinkled. And bloody. Elias’ breaths splay his lungs like bellows. As James moves to sit up, Elias stops him with a foot over his throat, heel and toe propped up on his collarbone and chin. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not going to tell anyone what happened here, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he says with a sigh and sounding for all the world like this is a minor inconvenience. “I believe that certain matters are best kept personal. Man-to-man.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Who are you? Who are you </span>
  <em>really</em>
  <span>? You’re not James Wright.” Elias asks. He might as well.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>James’ smile returns though still closed-lipped and conspiratory. “Not the one that first arrived at this Institute at least. Do the specifics matter?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Elias suppresses a groan and sneers instead. </span>
  <em>Lord,</em>
  <span> this man is infuriating!</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Take care, Elias.” James calls as Elias slams the door behind him.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter Three: The Truth Comes Out, Fucking Finally. That Took Forever</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The real James Wright had brown eyes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s dark in Elias’ flat save for the faintly blue-tinted light of his desktop monitor. He’s pulling at his hair with one hand while the other taps absently at his mouse pad, the mouse itself idle beside it. On his screen -thin crust of blood in the corners, </span>
  <em>of course</em>
  <span>- is a file he found online containing pictures from a newspaper article about a break-in the Magnus Institute. The article is from 1970, three years before James Wright became Head of the Institute -Elias has been at this screen for several hours- and one of the pictures, while admittedly grainy though some of that may in part just be the shittiness of his monitor, shows James. Twenty years younger, sure, but it’s still clearly him. He’s half-crouched next to a shelf in artefact storage with his sleeves rolled up, pointing at a pile of shattered porcelain on the floor with his face turned toward the camera and his mouth open in speech.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His eyes are, without a doubt, brown.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias finally sits back, pulling his arms in to cross them and to pick at his lip. Blood runs from his eye down his face. Obviously. On the desk next to his computer lies a tape recorder. It’s turned off. He turns it on.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s quiet save for the whirr of the tape for a moment. Elias sighs. “I suppose I should record my findings somehow. I’m not sure how much of the following will even truly be findings. Plenty of it’s sure to be conjecture or even just thinking out loud, but I still want there to be a record of it just in case I do somehow end up....well. Gertrude told me I should record my findings when she gave me these tapes. Anyway I guess that record can be literal, haha. Er, this is Elias Bouchard. I work for the Magnus Institute and am currently its official Head, though it hasn’t been long and my predecessor hasn’t made a move to leave. Actually, this tape is regarding exactly that matter.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“James Wright was appointed Head of the Magnus Institute in 1973 and I was appointed this year, in 1996. After I was signed in, sworn in, all that business, Wright took me down to the tunnels below the Institute. I did some research and it looks like these tunnels could be remnants of an old prison -there was one in that place ages ago. I couldn’t find too much about it but this theory was somewhat encouraged by something else I found. During my research I was looking into different kinds of prison architecture and I found out about the “Panopticon,” the idea of cells arranged in a ring around a tower in the middle that allows prisoners on all sides to be constantly surveyed. This is relevant because the idea sounded like where Wright took me almost to the letter. </span>
</p><p> </p><p><span>“And there was a dead body there. That’s probably relevant. It was covered in a thick layer of dust so it had to have been there for a long time but it looked....pretty well preserved. It hadn’t decomposed, I mean. Wright didn’t seem put off about that, so -and this is where the conjecture comes into play- I’m guessing he already knew. Maybe- maybe he even killed that man! It’s possible! He knocked me out there. When I woke up, he was talking, some vague, poetic nonsense about secrecy, and. Oh yeah! </span>He was digging my fucking eye out!<span> It’s still bleeding now, what, a month later? Yeah....around there. It’s taken some getting used to. According to Gertrude the experience left a mark of the Flesh on me.” He pauses to grumble a bit and resumes his tapping at the desk “Rather deep one judging by everything that’s happened. Something something, blood and guts, something something being used, etcetera. Anyway, there’s a few things I learned later that build on this story.</span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“As I was leaving I called Wright’s name and he said no. This part is important. No? What kind of response is that, was my initial thought. As I was doing my own digging earlier, I found a picture of Wright from before his promotion. This is going to make me sound a bit daft -like, really, this is what I’m choosing to focus on?- but his eyes changed colour. In 1970 James Wright had brown eyes. This year, 1996, his eyes are green. Bright bottle green. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And I mean, that’s got to mean something, right? He tried to gouge my eyes out! He-” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias slumps backwards. The dates don’t add up. He doesn’t know when James’ eyes changed or what it means. Was it a side effect of a supernaturally-related personality change? Why would it change his eyes? Where does the Panopticon come into play? Wh-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I </span>
  <em>am </em>
  <span>daft!” he cries and immediately regrets it because damn, that's recorded on tape forever now. “The Institute serves the </span>
  <em>Eye</em>
  <span>! At some point during his employment, James Wright became connected to the Eye and started- started changing! Like some people do! He started changing and that must be what he meant when he told me he was “not the same James that first came to the Institute! He told me that by the way. So....so James Wright joins the Magnus Institute and gains a connection to Beholding, at some point his service reaches the point that it causes a physical transformation and at another point he becomes Head, but-” his frenzied rambling slows “But I don’t know when those points are in relation to one another. He keeps going on about a purpose, a-a legacy. That’s got to be related. He....everything he has done has been for this purpose. He changed for this purpose, he became Head for this purpose, he-he made </span>
  <em>me</em>
  <span> Head for this purpose! There’s got to be something I’m missing!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He falls back against his chair again. Elias has the indistinct sensation that there is in fact nothing that he is missing and that he is simply failing to put the pieces together. His head swims with knowledge, with frustration, with blood and bones in all the wrong places. But they are the right places. It keeps him alive, doesn’t it? So it must be right. He worries too much, he tells himself. His body is safe and healthy and comfortable, so he should feel comfortable in it and let it be while he sherlock holmeses this bastard. His shoulders pet themselves.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t feel like much of a detective.” he sighs.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After a few moments of tapping, he gasps, snatching up the recorder and cursing himself for not thinking of this sooner. </span>
  <em>Of course! </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“But I know someone who just might!” Okay dude? Shut up. Just. Yeah.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The front doors of the Institute are locked. Obviously. It’s three in the morning on a Saturday. Elias doesn’t know this though. He didn’t even raise a brow at the fact that buses weren’t running, he just walked there. Fortunately, one of his work friends had known about the archival-staff-exclusive entry heading right to the basement, which is exactly where he aims to go anyway, and it doesn’t take too much scouting around to find it either. He just hopes someone will still be there. It is a bit late, after all.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The man hasn’t seen a clock in hours. He thinks it’s around eleven on Friday night. Bless him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s unlocked too, which is marvellously convenient! Elias heads in. The archive is just a touch brighter than the rest of the Institute without quite the same glare as Wright’s, or technically </span>
  <em>Elias</em>
  <span><em>’</em> office but feels shaded between all the shelves and its placement in the basement. The air is chilled and dry as a bone. He suppresses a twitch as he tries to find his way through the maze of files. The lights are on so someone must still be here, right?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sure enough, Gertrude’s sharp “Hello?” echoes across the room. He turns towards it and finds his way to an open door, the archivist standing in the doorway with a tape recorder in one hand and the remnants of a bun curling around her ears. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s me, uh, Elias? Sorry to bother you this late,” he apologies. A twitch sneaks up on him and he tries not to show his frustration. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Don’t worry.” she waves him off but she seems a bit bothered anyway. “What do you need?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He shifts his weight. “I think I’ve had an epiphany. About, y’know, my predicament. James. The Eye. The Institute. You know. You said you were curious about it all, I found a few things and I feel like I’m really, </span>
  <em>really </em>
  <span>close to a breakthrough, I just need your expertise.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Gertrude sighs. “I see this may take a while. Come into my office.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>----</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well,” she finally says after about half an hour of his somehow -probably supernaturally- coherent rambling. “There is certainly a lot to go off here.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yes. But where are we going off </span>
  <em>to </em>
  <span>is what I need your help to figure out.” He’s shifting his weight from foot to foot and shaking his hands, skin writhing in restlessness.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Gertrude rises and begins to pace, slowly. She seems much older than her mid-fifties, hunched and greyed and creased from years of carrying such horrors on her shoulders. One finger taps at her lip. A tape recorder has been running on her desk the whole while. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Wright’s eyes changing -you don’t think that could be connected to his position as Institute Head, do you?” Elias asks. “I mean, there’s no way of knowing when they changed, if it was when he became Head or n-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It was.” she says. “Which means....” she trails off and sighs. “Wright’s eyes changed colour when he became Head. When you became Head, he tried to take your eyes out, which in turn could mean-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“-That he wanted to</span>
  <em> replace</em>
  <span> them,” Elias breathes with dawning terror.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“....and when you put </span>
  <em>that </em>
  <span>together with all his talk of ‘legacy’ and your obvious incompetence as you are....” she waits for him to finish for her again but his mouth is busy taking a swig of the tea Gertrude had abandoned during her pacing. She gives him a sharp look and he sets it down. “....it could mean -no it almost definitely means- James wanted to force you into the same kind of transformation that he went through.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bile rises in Elias’ throat. He doesn’t know why. By all accounts Gertrude’s conclusion makes sense, not to mention that he should have -he does have, or so he’d thought- a much stronger stomach considering all that’s happened recently. He half wished his body would comfort itself as it sometimes does, tries to coax his -but not </span>
  <em>really </em>
  <span>his- bones by flexing his throat, but it doesn’t come.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“In case I wasn’t clear enough,” she goes on “He chose you for a reason, but that reason was not your ability or your potential to lead the Institute well. It’s likely that when the original James Wright was promoted to Head, he was in the same situation; unfit to lead by the previous Head despite his choice to promote him.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So it’s like an ‘old family secret’ sort of thing, where once the next one in the line of succession comes of age they have to learn all these things and gain this new power.” Elias muses.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something is still nagging at the back of his head though. “But what about the Panopticon? He could have metaphysically gutted me right in his office and gotten it done with that much more quickly. It’s got to come into play <em>s</em></span>
  <em>omehow</em>
  <span><em>,</em> right?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hm. It could merely be a symbolic aesthetic choice. The higher powers are quite big fans of symbolism and cultural connotations in my experience. And the word does mean “all-seeing” so it’s likely to be a....a power hotspot of sorts for Beholding due to that particular connotation.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias runs a hand through his hair and sighs. He thinks briefly that that bulb on the back of his head wasn’t there earlier.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Although there is still the body that you mentioned,” the archivist continues with a hum. Her finger keeps tapping. “I would like to get a look at it myself before we come to a conclusion. Would you mind taking me?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m not sure I’d remember the way.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“We won’t get lost.” her confidence ticks him off for only a brief second before he sighs and decides to take it as the encouraging sign he usually does. Besides, she seems to just kind of know things when she needs to. Even if that fails, you’d probably need to have a pretty good sense of direction to be able to find your way around in the fucking maze that is the archive. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Sure,” he relents. “Let’s go.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The tunnels are as dark and dusty as he would have remembered them had he not been scared out of his wits and half blind the last time he’d been down. Technically Elias is still half blind but he’s had the time to adapt to it. His balance has adjusted, his remaining vision has cleared, and even if his depth perception seems to be perpetually fucked into the bloody floor, it’s a manageable inconvenience now.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He guesses at most of the turns but twice Gertrude stops him and directs them both the other way. They manage to find the area much, </span>
  <em>much </em>
  <span>later but with little incident. She comments on the size of the room as both underwhelming and enormous and starts up the stairs ahead of Elias. He shakes his head in annoyance. She may have the expertise to back it up most of the time, sure, but she has that kind of subtle pretentious flair that bugs everyone at least a little.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Ah, Gertrude.” he hears from the room at the top as he’s rounding the corner.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“James.” comes Gertrude’s startled reply.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias pounds up the rest of the stairs and bursts in. James raises his eyes to meet him and smiles coyly, fingers tapping slowly on his cane. His nose is bound in bandages. A hard, bulky shape that is quite obviously a gun sticks out of his jacket.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What are </span>
  <em>you</em>
  <span> doing here?” Elias growls.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I figured I’d find you here,” the old man replies. “Seems I was a bit earlier than intended.” he adds as though anyone would believe that horseshit.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He turns back to Gertrude. “I wanted to see both of you but especially you, Gertrude. You see, for someone so blind, -ah. Perhaps that was distasteful in present company. Whoopsie.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias glares.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“For someone so blind to the truth,” he goes on “You truly are too intelligent for your own good. Well, both of ours really, but mostly yours. You are....an incredible asset here. It’s a pity you worked late tonight. Had you gone home, had Elias not been able to speak with you and help you finally put a few things together, I have no doubts you would have continued a long and lucrative career as the Archivist.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It would have come to this eventually. You know that.” Gertrude says. James sighs and nods.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That was the point I was getting to, yes.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re not even going to stop and think for a moment,” she continues “About the fate of the world? I’ve been stopping all the rituals. Who will do that when I’m gone?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias glances between the two of them. She seems way too accepting that she’s probably about to be murdered. That’s what’s happening, right? James means to kill Gertrude? It’s a hard room to read.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh I think the world will fare just fine,” James says with a grin. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hm.” the archivist turns her eyes away from James for a brief moment to contemplate the body “I suppose if </span>
  <em>you’re</em>
  <span> confident, then there’s little to fear. I had wondered about it on a few occasions. The rituals. Couldn’t take any chances, though.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Be foolish to.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He must have been a fool then,” she nods to the body. James raises an eyebrow.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“If I could ask you to elaborate?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That would be Jonah Magnus, would it not? I presume he got a bit overzealous in his own attempt. Got too lax in his haste.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“A fair assumption.” he says, half-nodding. “If only he’d lived to learn from his mistakes.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Gertrude turns her head slowly back to him, eyes narrowed. Elias’ stomach churns, the world around her seeming to fizz and swirl like homemade video. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The archivist’s shoulders shake. James tilts his head, smiling placidly. Elias inches along the wall. Something is about to happen and he wants to be near James to lunge for him if he’s the one doing it. His clothing is far heavier than it should be and sticks to his sweaty skin. Twice, his shoes skid. He looks down. Blood has seeped through his bandages completely and is pooling on the ground.  Ah yes, more of this. More blood. As always. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The air in the tiny room is dry enough to itch. As Gertrude’s eyes go suddenly wide after a long, agonising moment, she opens her mouth to speak only to be interrupted by James, desperately quick.</span>
</p><p> </p><p><strong>“If only you too, Gertrude, could have learned something here tonight, but,” </strong>he muses. Gertrude stands stock-still, transfixed and frozen with her mouth agape. Her pupils are stretched out wide like elastic and fixed on James, who smiles. Elias glares. Blood pours from his eye to the floor and weeps up and down his arms, hot with confused rage. <strong>“-I’m afraid that’s not to be. If only the world could have known to thank you for all your service. Maybe whichever of your assistants finds you first will tell the tale. That’s assuming, of course, that you still have their trust, that they don’t know who and what you are. That they still care. A care you’d never return, even if you lived to have the chance. But no. Only one living soul will miss you I’m afraid.</strong></p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Your cat. Sad, really, that you’ll only be missed by a dumb animal and not by anyone you truly connected with, no one who loved you, no one who would wonder about what happened, just a pet. And even then only because you never made it home to feed it. </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>But it does little to dwell on-”</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias flings himself at James, sending the old man toppling to the ground with an undignified grunt. As he moves to scramble up he stops him by kicking him full-force in the gut. James hacks and gargles out a yell.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Gertrude jumps and collects herself, babbling in discomfort. Elias glances up and gives Wright another kick just because while she fishes in her bag. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Step back,” she says. Elias huffs and does so. Wright staggers to his feet with one gnarled hand on the wall and the other reaching around desperately for his cane. He slips on the blood and falls again. Elias tries to stifle a laugh. James, seemingly giving up, sneers and reaches into his jacket and pulls out the gun. He opens his mouth to say something snarky.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A white flash blinds the room but the noise is a short snap rather than the bang of a gun.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As Elias blinks, Gertrude pulls the photo out of the camera and waves it about. James blinks. His face and clothes are smeared red from his fall and he kneels in the same pool of blood now. </span>
  <em>Oh, of course! </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So that’s what you want? False evidence painting me as a killer?” he snarls.</span>
</p><p> </p><p><span>“Please. Didn’t even get the body in that.” chimes in Elias, looking over Gertrude’s shoulder deeply impressed with her forward-thinking. She gave the impression that her memory was starting to go. “Sure, it’d look </span><em>bad</em> <span>for you but you’d need a murder trial for the question of being a murderer to even get brought up. At most this is blackmail. Also at least. This is just....yeah this is just blackmail. No way around it.”</span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>James finally manages to stand, bracing himself on the wall with one hand and aiming the gun at Gertrude with the other before he rounds on Elias. “Fine. Blackmail me, then. Won’t do you much good with a dead archivist. Nobody to answer your questions then. Do you want that? Do you want to be as you were in that gas station bathroom forever?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Good luck talking yourself out of that snapshot when I don’t leave this room alive.” Gertrude replies before Elias can, tucking the camera back into her bag. “The evidence is only as false as you make it, James.” she tilts her head and grins in an inelegant, unpractised facsimile of his own mannerism. It’s awkward seeing her, usually so stoic, trying to mimic someone “But you’re not James. We all know that already. Still, while we’re all here, I might as well take the opportunity to ask. </span>
  <b>Who are you, really?”</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The world takes on that grainy, swarming video quality once more, laser focused in around Gertrude, sharp and steady. James narrows his eyes for a moment but then seems to melt. His shoulders go slack and his throat shakes around unheard syllables. He lets out a stuttering sigh. Elias gags.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Have to say, I’m a bit shocked you haven’t already figured that tidbit out yourself,” </span>
  <span>he starts, obviously preening under the Eye’s attention. </span>
  <span>“Though-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Stop that. Get to the point.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He rolls his eyes. </span>
  <strong>“I’m James Wright, of course.”</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias groans. Of course. Of fucking course this would be so much harder than it needs to be. It shouldn’t even be a shock at this point, unnecessary convolution was the tone set in the first damn chapter. Or at least that was the intent. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>James smiles. “But that’s not what you want to hear, is it?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I must not be asking the right questions.” sneers Gertrude.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Would you like a hint?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’ll manage. </span>
  <b>Who am I talking to?</b>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The old man sighs. “</span>
  <span>I’m Jame-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>“No.” </b>
  <span>she continues. Air whirrs in Elias’ ears. </span>
  <b>“I’m looking at James Wright. Who am I talking to?”</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That gives him pause. He sucks in a long, trembling breath, eyes darting to Elias, to the ceiling, back to Gertrude, to the body, to Elias again. His whole body heaves and shudders against the wall, blood smearing brick. He starts to talk and presses both hands to his mouth, losing his grip on the wall and falling to his side with a splash and a noise of revulsion. The air crackles. Elias feels his edges blur, sees the room flicker as James and Gertrude stand clear as day amid a film of static he can almost but not quite blink away. Gertrude tilts her head. </span>
  <b>“Answer me.</b>
  <span>” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re right,” </span>
  <span>he gasps </span>
  <strong>“Stop this, you’re right. I see you. You’re right. You already know the truth you’re trying to pull out of me, stop playing coy and trying to fit it into the words you want. You’re right, let me go, let me go, you’re right you’re right let me-”</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias, fed up, knocks him on the skull with his cane. The old man’s head falls, neck gone slack. Gertrude snaps back to presence and glares at him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I thought you wanted closure.” she says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I do.” he shrugs, chest shaking. A casual attitude is more comfortable than the simmering anger his blood tries to insist on. “But I wanted to hit him more.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The archivist sighs. “Fair, I suppose.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She turns to leave. Elias stops her with a hand. “Wait, you’re just leaving? He’s right here! If you leave now, he’ll just get up later and continue....whatever he’s up to. Because he’s obviously up to something! And he tried to kill you!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What would we do now?” Gertrude snaps. Elias recoils and she rolls her eyes and scrubs a hand across her face. “I’ve been working for thirty hours. There is nothing we can do to him now that we can’t do later. Besides, didn’t it occur to you that maybe the Panopticon isn’t completely useless in all this? Killing Jonah -which is obviously what you want to do- could have consequences-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jonah?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She looks at him. He continues, waving his arms about. “Like, Jonah Magnus? That guy over there?” he points to the seated corpse.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh. Yes, I suppose that conversation wouldn’t make much sense to someone who couldn’t Behold. Yes, James Wright is Jonah Magnus.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias’ face goes slack. The eyes in his leg, still stinging from their haphazard blinding hours earlier, roll wildly in their sockets. The blood on his skin pauses in its descent. “He’s what?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Calm down.” she scolds him. “Getting angry won’t solve-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p><span>“I don’t care!” Blood churns around their shins. “What the fuck are you trying to <em>t</em></span><em>ell me</em><span><em>?</em> Do you hear yourself? Do you hear how batshit you sound right now? I get that all this-” he waves an arm “stuff is weird, and scary, and confusing, but what is- what next, am </span><em>I </em><span>Jonah Magnus? Are </span><em>you</em> <span>Jonah Magnus, what- is this like a body switching scenario? Possession? Is it-”</span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yes. Both, I suppose. </span>
  <em>Calm. Down. </em>
  <span>And I will explain. Hopefully in a way that won’t have me drowned.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias settles, still seething, and blinks. The blood is swirling like a whirlpool centred around Gertrude, who remains impassive. “Sure. Sorry. Sorry. So-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Shut up. Yes. The situation can be described as Jonah Magnus switching bodies. At this moment he’s in James Wright. In spirit, at least. I’ve known, but only for about an hour. It first occurred to me when we saw him here and he confirmed it under my compulsion when he said 'i was right.'</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Where to begin....while my Beholding abilities are tied to my work as the archivist and serve to help me gain knowledge -rather unnecessary as they’ve been of more help in this little endeavour than in my work at large- Jonah’s are tied to his body. I can’t say how they differ from my own but judging by how he was able to know we were coming here, they probably have much greater range, though how much of that is true difference between us and how much is just my own lack of practice I can’t say for certain.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias nods along, wading over to the corpse to inspect it after stooping down to snatch James’ forgotten pistol. “So which one is the real Magnus, then?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Both. Depends what you mean.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well, which one does he control? Use to think, experience the consciousness of, that sort of thing.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You can’t honestly expect me to know that.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You give the impression that you know everything.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Do you know how difficult that would be?” she says with a derisive laugh. Elias glares and mutters but doesn’t deign to reply, instead poking and prodding at the original Jonah. His face is slack as if in sleep, though his eyes are-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Are his eyes-” he stumbles back and whips around to James, still twitching on the ground. The blood has gone back down to puddle-height, leaving a stain over half the old man’s face. His nose looks freshly crushed, bandage hanging loose off sloughing skin. Even in sleep, he smiles. “His eyes are- is that why Wright’s changed with the promotion? Is that why he-?” he brings shaking fingers up to his own empty, weeping socket.</span>
</p><p> </p><p><span>“He-” he chokes, blood rushing in his ears. “I was- That’s how- That’s what....” he stumbles over words, realisations coming faster than his tongue can move “And that’s how he controls him -Wright- and how he was going to control </span><em>me </em><span>and he was going to </span>kill me <span>and </span><em>use me</em> a<span>nd I’d </span><em>be him</em><span> and he’d-”</span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Gertrude nods, catching his drift. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That’s what he....’spoiled meat,’ ‘gorgeous’ ‘potential’ ‘legacy’ that’s the legacy! There was never any line of succession, it was all Jonah, it was Jonah all along, he never left the position, every Head, every single person, they were -they were all-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Not you.” she cuts in. “You’re the Head now, and you’re not Jonah.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Would you shut up? I’m having a crisis of identity.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p><span>“Why? It isn’t </span><em>your</em> <span>identity that’s been up to questioning.”</span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know!” he wails. It feels pitiful -he’s </span>
  <em>thirty four, </em>
  <span>damn it!- but it’s all coming crashing down around him, the hands, the eyes, the Eye, Jonah, the truth about the promotion, etcetera etcetera. He’d been meat on the chopping block long before meat had been the chosen metaphor. This man -no this </span>
  <em>thing- </em>
  <span>sought him out to gut him like a fish, to wear his skin like a fur coat, just the latest in a processing line of corpses stretching who even </span>
  <em>knew </em>
  <span>how far back sacrificed to some asshat’s immortality. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And now he was down an eye, a month in rent, a fuckton of blood, and thirty four years of relative mental stability, all for </span>
  <em>nothing</em>
  <span>. Nothing at all had come of this but a few fistfights and some used tape!</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias collects himself. Gertrude is staring at him with thinly veiled exasperation. “So what now?” he asks.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She barks a laugh. “You think I know? I can’t just know everything, unlike our dear friend Jonah.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Not funny. And again, *what*?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh. I thought you had that figured out too during your breakdown about eyes.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No.” he hisses.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“My mistake then,” she sighs. “If Jonah’s original body has been here the entire time and using his eyes to take over each institute Head -his eyes on the ground, if you will- then there’s a reason he hasn’t left. Judging by the fact that you’re new to the fear business, he hasn’t been picking his successors based on their proximity to the Eye, meaning they have no access to its power on their own. Meaning it’s Jonah himself with the power.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And that power comes from the Panopticon.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Likely.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“But if he’s been switching bodies how does he tie-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Maybe that wasn’t the best way to put it.” she interrupts. “I agreed with you on that because I thought it would be easier to understand that way but that’s not exactly what’s happening. Jonah Magnus is very much in possession of his own body. Just not all of it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p><span>“Could you </span><em>stop</em> <span>being so bloody cryptic? What do you m-”</span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“The </span>
  <em>eyes</em>
  <span>, Elias! The eyes, damn it, his eyes may be in a different body but they are very much Jonah Magnus’ eyes. As long as Jonah Magnus stays in this tower, </span>
  <em>all of him </em>
  <span>has use of his Beholding powers -again, vague even to me- and should he so choose to divide himself-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Okay okay I get it, he can chop himself up and send parts out to do murder and paperwork while still technically being *here* I get it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Thank you. Glad we’re finally on the same page.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They stand in silence. James groans on the floor. “It’s really hard to explain things when you keep interrupting me.” The archivist confesses.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Swell. Why don’t we just kill this dick and go home already?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Because you’d die too,” comes a wavering voice from a suspiciously low altitude. Elias rears up to kick him but Gertrude places a hand on his arm. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Go on.” she says. Her exhaustion is obvious but for the sake of gaining knowledge and advancing the meagre semblance of a plot, she can deal. What a trooper. “We’re listening.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He hums, crawling to his knees on the now almost-dry floor. When the gun is nowhere to be found, he merely reaches for his cane instead and uses it to stand, shaking all the while. “You really did a number on me there, Elias.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Talk.” he growls in reply.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Touchy, touchy,” James sighs. “Maybe I don’t want to, hm? Why should I help out two people intent on my murder?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p><span>“Are you serious? You’re serious. You’ve already forgotten what </span><em>just</em> <span>happened?”</span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh the compulsion? By all means, go ahead. You already know everything it benefits me to hide.” he grins smugly. Gertrude crosses her arms with a flat look -really not much of a change from her resting demeanour but the pose really adds to the effect- and shakes her head. “What’s wrong, Gertrude? Worn out?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I think you know the answer.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I know you do. Are you regretting not making much use of your gifts yet?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hardly,” she sniffs. “Less so now. You seem remarkably eager to see me do so.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Pity.” he concedes. When Gertrude doesn’t answer, he sighs again and continues. “Well then I suppose you’ll both just have to take my word for it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Completely unprompted, he goes into a frustratingly poetic spiel about ritual ground and being “the beating heart of the Institute” and it’s all vague and daft as all hell but Elias finds himself caught listening, cannot bring himself to hit the old man again no matter how much he longs to. His blood settles down within and around him despite his ever-mounting rage. He gathers, though, that the Institute itself -the building, the artefacts, the statements, the employees, all of it- is tied to the life force of Jonah himself. If he burns, it all goes up in smoke with him. Everything and everyone. Rosie. Gertrude. The assistants. </span>
  <em>Elias.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“-and so you see, the real Panopticon was right under your nose all along. This neat little contraption may be the lens yes, but what use is a lens with nobody looking through it? I’m not merely an upgrade from you, Gertrude. There may be no knowledge that can hide from you but you still need to go out and sniff it out. I cannot be hidden from. I </span>
  <em>am</em>
  <span> the all-seeing optic.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He pauses and Elias suddenly feels much less spellbound. “Great. Now we know the whole truth. Thanks Jonah. Goodnight.” Before James can protest or continue his performance, Elias kneels down and knocks his lights out. Again. How many times has that been yet?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The room is silent for a moment. Elias stays kneeling on the dark, sticky ground, and pulls the old man up by his hair. Dried blood is cracked and peeling off the side of his face, bandage gone, eyes blessedly closed. His breath comes in slow, shallow heaves that scratch in Elias and Gertrude’s ears like nails off a chalkboard.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jonah Magnus and James Wright are both about to die. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias drops him and pulls the gun back out. Gertrude rips it from his hand and holds it in the air away from him. “Don’t.” she commands.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well now I </span>
  <em>can’t</em>
  <span>.” he snarls. “Why not? I thought you were all about sacrifice for the greater good.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Exactly. I need to decide what the greater good </span>
  <em>is</em>
  <span>. Jonah Magnus has centuries of experience working with the Eye in addition to his omniscience. Leaving him alive has risks, yes, but the Institute has resources and people with skills. If he can be detained or incapacitated by some other method, it could still be of use to-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It doesn’t matter how much </span>
  <em>good </em>
  <span>it can do, if Jonah being alive is a threat, that threat outweighs any good that could come of the Institute's continued existence.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p><span>“I’m sure of that. But I don’t think that <em>you</em> fully grasp the scale of any of this. You’re only using it as an excuse for your vengeance and on the off-chance that we’re both wrong, that is </span>not <span>a good enough reason for the amount of casualties that the death of the Institute would mean. Not to mention all that could be done with its resources should a ritual someday be at risk of success.”</span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias presses his lips together. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jonah isn’t the only person in the world to survive past his lifetime like this.” she continues, softer but no less accusatory. “Even with his death someone else could someday grow to be the same kind of danger.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Fine.” he relents, mostly just to get her to stop talking. “I won’t kill him. Not tonight.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“We’ll sleep on it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He nods again, bitter, but the exhaustion is starting to catch up. His whole body jerks with every minute twitch of what’s usually only a shoulder. Knobs of cartilage scrape together around his ribs.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Gertrude pockets the gun and makes her way to the stairwell but pauses halfway. “He does need to be incapacitated, though. I doubt his body can move but if his eyes wake up-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“On it.” Elias waves her off. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter Four: Kind of an Epilogue/Get Fucked Jimmy Magma</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>He goes through all the expected motions. Ensuring he’s still out and laying his body -because alive as he was he might as well not have been at this point- out prone across the tacky floor and setting about the process of one last unscrupulous glare before digging in.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t narrate the experience. </span>
</p><p> </p><p><span>Blood seeps under his nails as he pries open James’ right eye and braces three fingers and a thumb around it, sinking slowly around it into the socket. The resistance weakens once he’s pressing into the eye from the sides, the eye frail and soft without the support of the skull around it. He’s nervous to crush it. He shouldn’t be. Hell, most of him w</span>ants <span>to just rip this shit out like a band-aid, tear it apart with his nails instead of pulling it out to crush later. Finally, his fingertips are underneath the eye, buried in James’ skull. He tugs gently. The optic nerve strains against him and finally snaps, falling back into the socket slowly filling with blood, pus, and tears spilling free from the ruptured gland.</span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias holds the eye in his hand and meets it. The white is streaked red with inflamed veins, that telltale mossy iris mostly obscured by the foggy, unfocused pupil blown wide in the dimness. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Well, unfocused until it rolls onto him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Head narrows his own eye. Jonah looks at him, impassive without a face to grin with. Tears dry up on Elias’ bloodsoaked fingers as he stares Jonah down. An eye for an eye, he thinks, and almost wants to laugh. His own empty socket feels hollow for the first time since The Incident as if it has finally bled and cried itself dry. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jonah’s eye meets his own and Sees how hard he’s thinking about sticking it into his skull.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s bloody ridiculous. That’s literally exactly what started this whole miserable fucking debacle. That’s exactly what Elias has been trying more than anything to avoid this whole time. He doesn’t </span>
  <em>want </em>
  <span>to do it. He doesn’t know what would happen. Would one eye do the job? Would his own other eye left unreplaced let him survive or resist Jonah’s control? What would happen to James? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to, he </span>
  <em>does not want to</em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But he’s thinking about it. It’s impossible not to wonder. Jonah wants to smile.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Finally, Elias breaks his stare and starts in on the other eye.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They roll against one another in his palm. Elias contemplates them. They contemplate him back. Tears seep between his fingers. He’s got to hand it to Jonah, this is a pretty great length to go to to ensure his own survival. Not just the body-switching immortality deal but the trick with the Institute? Genius. Even Gertrude who has sacrificed plenty of lives already and probably more that he doesn’t know of objects to the mass grave that Jonah would drag down with him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Unfortunately Elias passed the point of being suicidal ages ago and only cares about the two eyeless bodies sitting before him and the heavy cane lying at his side.</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>----</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Gertrude is at Elias’ door. Thankfully, she knocks this time instead of breaking his lock with a hammer again. That isn’t as notable as the fact that she’s alive, though.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Can I help you?” he asks, peevishness at being woken up momentarily outweighing his apprehension towards the trigger-happy old woman and the fact that they are both very much still </span>
  <em>alive</em>
  <span>. It may be four in the afternoon but he was </span>
  <em>just </em>
  <span>starting to fall asleep after the morning’s events and the draining bus ride home.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I have another project I’d like your help on.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Don’t you have two assistants left?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Three, actually. I found a replacement.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Ah.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yes. Anyhow, this is </span>
  <em>very</em>
  <span> important and not only do I need as much manpower as I can get but I feel you’ll have a fair amount of personal interest in-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t.” he sighs. Gertrude raises an eyebrow. “Look, sorry, I just. I really don’t want to see you right now. I need to sleep. Sorry.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She heaves a dramatic and obviously fake sigh. “And here I thought you’d jump at the chance to kill your old boss.” Her eyes turn back to him, lips half-smirking. It’s the closest thing to a smile he’s seen from her yet. It’s also quite annoying in this context.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So she’s not only alive but completely unaffected. Old crone probably had nothing to worry about in the first place. She does still have Jonah’s gun though, he can see it sticking out of her bag. “Sure.” he says carefully. In the short time he’s known her, Gertrude has never seemed the type to listen to alternate points of view regarding taking action in dire circumstance and, again, she’s the one with the gun. If she doesn’t know what he did earlier, he wants to keep it that way as long as possible. “Just let me get dressed.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Bring a lighter.” she says before walking off.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>----</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Can I ask how long you’ve had all this?” Elias asks as he heaves a crate of explosives out of the rental car. There is more in the storage unit. It might take a few trips to get it all. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“A while. Rituals and the like.” she replies. </span>
</p><p> </p><p><span>“Of course.” he sighs. “And I’m certain it’s </span><em>all</em> <span>necessary.”</span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Better to use it all up now then let it go to waste, or worse, fall into someone else’s hands after my death.” She leans against the back Archive door with her own crate in hand and kicks a doorstop into place, turning over her shoulder to shoot him a wry smile. Seeing her smile has gotten no less jarring. “Besides. I always figured I’d go out with a bang. Might as well go all-out.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Oh he doubts she’s </span>
  <em>going</em>
  <span> anywhere.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Even setting aside the morning’s....events post her exit from the Panopticon, Gertrude doesn’t seem like the kind of person who dies. It just doesn’t feel right.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Once the car is empty, they load up and make their way back down into the tunnels. Elias lays out a few of the bombs along the way but most of the ones they’ve taken are to be saved for the Panopticon and the chamber it’s in. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What I still don’t quite get,” he muses, “Is how you expect to be able to light every bomb in the tunnels, the chamber, and the Institute, with enough time to finish them all before the first ones blow.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“We aren’t lighting them. I have a timed one that I’m going to set on your desk. That explosion will trigger the nearest ones, which will trigger the next ones, and so on and so forth.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Then why did you ask me to bring a lighter?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hm? Oh. Mine ran out of fluid and I have half a pack of cigarettes I’d like to use up before I die.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’d be a waste not to, I guess.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“My thoughts exactly.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He isn’t sure how to talk to her. She seems scarily at ease with her own impending doom. They haven’t even brought up the issue of whether he’s still Eyed up enough to die with her here. He certainly </span>
  <em>feels </em>
  <span>watched. Within or without of the Institute’s walls he can feel the weight of his keeper’s loving gaze prickling at the back of his neck, but what exactly he’s kept by at this point remains to be seen. “Mind if I bum a few?” he says instead.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Why not?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They continue on, mostly in silence. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It isn’t until they’ve breached the gaping maw of the Panopticon’s chamber when Elias breaks the silence. “How do you know we can believe what he said, anyway?” He asks as he starts setting up bombs. It might be a bit inelegant, but just for coverage, he uses the selfie stick he’d found in the Archives earlier to affix some to higher points on the walls. It’s supposed to come out casual, like he’s just thinking out loud, but he cringes at his own voice. </span>
  <em>Way to sound guilty there, pal.</em>
</p><p> </p><p><span>“I believe that all three of us knew from the moment he said it that my decision to destroy the Institute was inevitable.” she begins, sounding almost sad, but not quite. She might not know </span><em>how</em> <span>to sorrow. “James has been watching my work as an archivist for years. He knows of all I’ve sacrificed for the sake of the world and I doubt that he’d offer me a sacrifice to make so willingly without a web of strings attached. I am certain that I will die with Jonah.”</span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Romantic.” he can’t stop himself from laughing. The archivist seems unaffected. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Finally, she sets down a bomb at the bottom of the tower steps and starts making her way up. Elias holds his breath as he follows her, stepping over the explosives in her wake.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They falter side-by-side in the doorway. “I should have figured,” Gertrude sighs. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeah.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The bodies of Jonah Magnus and James Wright are brutalised beyond belief, beyond recognition even. Both are on the floor, slumped next to one another and oozing red. It’s impossible to tell them apart with their skulls and ribcages crushed inward and legs splayed out at inhuman angles, femurs knocked free from shattered hipbones.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“On the bright side,” Elias finally says “he obviously lied. You’re still alive after all.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He might be too, though.” she hums. He blinks, looks at Jonah’s bodies, looks back to Gertrude, and sags with a groan.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“The eyes?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“The eyes.” she nods. He pulls the ziploc bag out of his pocket. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I just don’t see h-wait no. Don’t explain. More Panopticon, division-of-the-self business.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh good, you’re not </span>
  <em>that </em>
  <span>dense.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He sneers. She continues before he can. “It’s for the better though. This way we can see the whole thing through before finally putting him down.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias guesses that that’s alright. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They rig the tower. Elias is almost sad he won’t be around to see the light show.</span>
</p><p>----</p><p>"I hope you know that this won't save you." Gertrude says, not looking up from her careful task with the bomb on the desk. They’ve already finished decking out the rest of the building. Elias pauses, a final smouldering cigarette between two fingers and a boot poised just over the ground. "Killing him won't take away the feelings of being watched or owned. That's all your burden to bear now."</p><p> </p><p>He didn’t tell her about how they haven’t left him, but honestly nothing she says surprises him at this point. Gertrude is just like that. </p><p> </p><p>The eyes that follow him have never been Jonah's. As much as killing Jonah may yet save lives, it won't save his own. Nothing can. </p><p> </p><p>Fortunately, he doesn't care anymore. "Okay."</p><p> </p><p>He stomps, crushing Jonah Magnus’ eyes to mush on the floor.</p><p> </p><p>Elias looks down. The blood running from his face down his right arm lying limp by his side pools in his palm, seeps between his fingers, and pulses in time with his slow, steady heart rate like a hand squeezing his own for comfort.</p><p> </p><p>He doesn't know how long he stands there wide-eyed but otherwise calm. He doesn't even grasp the sheer enormity of what he has done, the monumental, cataclysmic consequences of this one simple action. But when Gertrude finishes with the bomb and offers him a curt nod on her way out, he feels <em>proud</em>. </p><p> </p><p>"Just a matter of waiting, now. I would try to get out of here quickly if I were you though," she counsels, pausing in the doorway to tuck a sheaf of papers into her satchel. "Even if your relationship with the Flesh outweighs your connection to the Institute, I don’t believe you're invulnerable to explosives and falling rubble. Now if you’ll excuse me, I'd rather die having ensured my cat is in a good new home."</p><p> </p><p>"Yeah," he nods, momentarily losing his breath. "Yeah, you're right-" He turns around but the archivist is already long gone. Of course, he thinks, sighing. </p><p> </p><p>The darkness and empty hallways of the Institute feel corpselike, as though the building itself is dead already. He supposes it may as well be. It's almost sad to see it like this. Almost. Elias contemplates the irony of his funeral garb -blood doesn't show up on black fabric- and wonders if this building is worth mourning at all, if anything housed here made someone happy, if maybe <em>some </em>small good ever came or could have one day come of all the pain and terror that kept these walls standing?</p><p> </p><p>He supposes it doesn't really matter now. He's wasting valuable seconds that could be spent blowing this popsicle stand before it blows.</p><p> </p><p>The foyer glows as bright as always, but Elias pauses in the threshold of the hallway. It’s stupid, sure, but he stands there for a full five moments; shell-shocked by the sight, before he can finally bring himself to step over the cold, collapsed body of Gertrude Robinson and unlock the front door.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>hope you enjoyed, hav a gr8 day</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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